


Blue Rose on a Windowsill

by all_seeing_aye



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Karen is a bit of an alcoholic, Karen stifles her feelings, POV Karen Page, but it will jump around a bit, post-Virtue of the Vicious
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-05-18 17:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14857481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_seeing_aye/pseuds/all_seeing_aye
Summary: Karen feels everything and wishes she knew how to stop.(A series of vulnerable moments.)





	1. 9 p.m.

_Two explosions in one day. I have a new record._

      They’d kept her for more questioning, more statements, and then observation after she’d finished speaking to Brett, and after what seemed like forever, she’d been cleared to go home; if she had a concussion, the paramedics had said, it was a mild one. She’d be fine as long as she took it easy.

      By the time the squad car drops her off at her building, it’s almost 9 pm, and it’s brisk enough to make her teeth chatter. The cop in the driver’s seat leans toward her and offers to walk her up to her floor, but she shakes her head.

      “No, officer, I’m fine. Really. And tell Detective Mahoney I told you that,” she says to him, and she can hear the exhaustion in her voice creeping in along the edges. The car doesn’t leave the curb until she’s through the door and into the lobby, though. When it does, she releases a breath that’s been caught up in her throat for the better part of the day, since all her thoughts had narrowed down to the barrel of a gun pointed squarely at her face- and that was before the shit had _really_ hit the fan.

_I need a fucking drink._

 

* * *

 

      There’s a voicemail from Ellison telling her to stay home and recuperate, dammit, or he’ll barricade the doors to the office, he swears to God. So she makes a beeline to the handle of Jack Daniels on her kitchen island and takes a swig from the bottle before she even pauses to kick off her shoes and drop her damaged purse. She figures she’s had the kind of day that doesn’t require one to drink from a glass. She leans, her left arm bracing herself up off the counter, and feels the fatigue press in on her like a heavy blanket. She’s too tired to stem the tide of thoughts about what had happened- _I nearly died. Again_. She could almost still feel Lewis at her back, the bulky shape of the explosives pressing through his jacket. But Frank had been there, all of a sudden. He said he’d come for her, and then he was there.

_Frank._

      And suddenly it’s him Karen can feel, his weight against her- she’d practically been holding him up as they left the kitchen, with him pressing the gun she’d stolen from a dead man up under her jaw, and her willing her body to cover as much of Frank as it could, as if she could deflect the bullets. As if she could hide him completely. “Don’t shoot,” she’d begged. In her mind, it had been more like a prayer.  _Don’t hurt him anymore, please, don’t hurt him._ He had recoiled at her suggestion to use her as a human shield, but she’d insisted with steel in her voice. _Let me protect you._  

      And then the stillness of the service elevator, her forehead pressed to his, her hand on his ruined arm, and they had both been drinking it in, that they were both still breathing… It hadn’t lasted long enough. She’d never seen him look so tired, so _fragile._ He’d taken fire for her, bled for her, again, and all she could do was tell him to escape.  Don’t do this and say it’s for me, she’d said, and then she’d put a target on her back and given him no choice.

      She’s vaguely aware of the cuts on her face, the tenderness of her rib, an assortment of sharp stings and dull aches from all over that are finally starting to take a back seat to how fucking tired she is. She’s sticky with dried sweat and a layer of grit. The fingers of her left hand tap a nervous rhythm on the countertop and her eyes fall shut as she throws back another mouthful of booze. It burns on the way down. She sets down the bottle and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and she smells gunpowder. She decides not to think too hard about why she finds that comforting.

      Something the paramedic said while he tended to her forehead comes back to her: “keep water off your cuts when you shower for the next couple of days, just to be safe.” The memory spurs her into slow movement. _I should shower._ So she does, shedding her clothes haphazardly as she moves towards her tiny bathroom and trying to keep her face dry once she steps into the tub. The water runs from her body cloudy and gray at first with pulverized concrete, and it’s a bitch to get the stuff out of her hair, but eventually, she’s clean. She wraps herself in a towel, sits on the edge of the tub, and stares at nothing until the ringing in her ears becomes deafening. She sees her blouse crumpled on the tile and notices that, mercifully, it doesn’t have much blood on it; she should be able to wear it again. She reminds herself to soak it in some cold water.

      And then she starts laughing.

      It shudders through her body, rolls unbidden through the hand she has pressed to her lips, and she knows there’s no stopping it. It’s low, nervous laughter, almost manic; there’s no amusement in it at all. She gives herself a minute to let it fully pass before she tries to figure out where it came from. Relief and sheer goddamn exhaustion, probably, but then a smaller, darker part of her suggests an answer: _satisfaction._ Someone had tried to kill her, and she’d fought back. She liked fighting back. The realization chills her even as the steam from the shower swirls around her.

      She kills that thought before she can follow it further. _I’m not dealing with that right now._ And then she sighs deeply, drops her head into her palms, runs her fingers back through her wet hair, and pauses like that for a moment before standing, her tired legs unsteady.

_Time for another drink._

 

* * *

 

      She dozes off on the couch with infomercials playing quietly on the television, but her sleep is shallow and restless. At midnight, her phone buzzes. It wakes her and she starts, fumbles for it in the near darkness, and reads the message. Two words, unknown number:

 

_I’m okay._

 

      Her breath catches, then releases. Her reply:

 

_Good._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, the title is from a song- Blue Rose on a Windowsill by Slow Meadow. 
> 
> We'll see if I actually incorporate blue roses. 
> 
> Everything I write is angst and distance, I'm so sorry.


	2. Sleepless

      She wakes up the following morning on her couch with a pounding headache that she knows she should probably see a doctor about, but she chooses instead to pop a few Tylenol and call in to the office. She’d spent a half hour on the phone after her interview with Brett giving Ellison the basic outline of what had happened, and she’d left it to someone else in the office to break the story while she threw together a skeleton outline of the events as she’d experienced them. It’s slow going. She goes through a few cups of bitter instant coffee before she gets to five hundred words, and she decides with one last keystroke that five hundred is her limit for the morning. She pushes her laptop to the side and looks at her phone; her heart quickens, just a little, in a tangle of worry and relief. It amazes her that words she didn’t even hear spoken have the ability to echo in her ears.

      Karen compromises with her better judgment and takes a nap instead of calling a medical professional about the headache, and she has fifteen hundred words done by that evening. She recounts every detail- Frank taking two bullets for her, Senator Ori throwing her to Lewis out of cowardice and desperation, the negotiation in the kitchen- except the last few, in the elevator. Every other headline she’d seen since she’d first scrolled through her feed had painted Frank as a conspirator and it sickens her that hers is the only voice that can make that right. And she can’t even tell the whole truth, the ethics of journalism be damned, because she can’t expose him. Or the fact that she helped him escape. According to her article, Frank kept the gun on her and told her to face the wall, and then he was gone; she didn’t see him escape. She pretends to be conflicted about the lie, but her heart isn’t in it. As hard as she fights for the truth, she knows she’ll always fight harder for Frank- his life, his safety. At some point along their way, that’s how things had become for her. She’s not sure when. The truth is that she staged herself as a hostage, the he couldn’t have escaped without her help, that she’s his informant and secret weapon, and the truth is that the Bulletin will never print the whole story about the bombing at the Willeford Hotel. She attaches the document in an email, hits send, and drains a beer to wash the bitterness of it all out of her mouth.

 

* * *

 

     As she lays in bed that night, sleep just out of reach, she recalls:

_It’s 7:30 am. She’s just finishing with the zipper of her skirt when her phone buzzes, muffled as it rests on the bedcover. No caller ID. Typical. She picks up._

_“Where are you going to be?” Frank asks, already impatient._

_“What do you mean?”_

_“That asshole is a terrorist, Karen. He already nearly killed someone who tried to help him get his shit together. He singled you out, and you pushed back. He’s going to come after you.” His voice is low, mission-ready and rough, but there’s a frantic edge to it._

_“I have a job to do, Frank,” she hisses. Fuck pretense. She’s angry. “I can’t stay holed up somewhere because I’m afraid. I have to fight this. I have a responsibility to fight this.”_

_“’Fight this?’ How?”_

_“I’m surprised you don’t already know,” she quips._

_“I’m flying blind and I don’t have time to explain why. What are you gonna do?”_

_She sighs, short and tense. “An interview. With the senator.”_

_“Don’t,” he growls._

_“You don’t give me orders. This is my job. You’re right, he singled me out, and that’s why it’s my responsibility to prove him wrong,” she says, and then adds forcefully- “-the RIGHT way.”_

_“Dammit, Karen,” he breathes. He sounds almost desperate. Scared. An unexpected, quiet ache fills her. She remembers the way he'd looked that night in her old apartment, the split second before he'd thrown himself between her and the spray of bullets. The way he'd looked in that hospital bed when he told her he didn't react in time, that he'd failed his wife and children. The way he'd looked that night by the bridge, his defenses utterly collapsing under the weight of his fear. The way he'd shouted, then begged, then... Her cheek feels warm where his lips, rough and dry, had brushed her skin so gently that she could hardly even believe it happened._

_She can at least tell him she’ll be safe._

_“Ori has a security team in place at a hotel in Midtown. I don’t even know which room or floor, they’ll escort me up.”_

_“Security team?” he asks. “NYPD detail?”_

_“No. A private firm. Not sure which. I’ll be safe.”_

_“Where, Karen? Which hotel?”_

_She shouldn’t tell him. She bites her lip, then acquiesces. “The Willeford.”_

_She hears another unsteady breath, then, “thank you.” The line clicks dead._

     She’s glad she told him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long! The next chapter is already written, and it's a doozy.
> 
> it seems Frank didn’t have contact with Micro between finding Curtis in Front Toward Enemy and getting back to the bunker at the beginning of Danger Close, so I decided he got his info somewhere else.
> 
> Fun fact: I've stayed in the hotel where Virtue of the Vicious took place, so I actually know what it's called. It's not called the Willeford.


	3. E-mail

              

               The same morning she heads into work hearing buzz about a shootout in the park the previous night, she’s CCed in an email with a link to a YouTube video. She checks her inbox and notices it once she’s settled in at her desk with her laptop. She doesn’t recognize the sender’s address, and it’s clearly a temporary one, likely created for the purpose of sending her this email. She takes a sip of her cheap coffee as she opens the link, and then she nearly drops the cup when she sees the title. She swears as she rights herself and then freezes and reads the title again.

               “THE PUNISHER FRANK CASTLE Marine homecoming video WITH FAMILY MEMBERS,” it reads, and it goes through her like a bolt of lightning. Apparently one of Lisa’s teachers had filmed Frank surprising her in the classroom when he got home from his last deployment, posted the video, and forgotten about it. But the internet, true to form, had picked up the scent, and now the clip was making the rounds, sensationalized heading and all. This version has over 25,000 views. It had been posted that morning.

               Nausea blooms in the pit of her stomach.

               Karen shudders in a breath as the video buffers- the Bulletin has terrible internet, even though the recent subscription bump means their publisher can probably afford to make it faster- and then she feels her eyes grow hot as the video starts playing. She sets her coffee down and presses both hands against her closed lips, a fruitless palliative gesture. She doesn’t want to see this, but she can’t seem to force her body to move to close the browser window. _And you are curious,_ that treacherous, small part of her whispers. A tear falls on the back of her hand.

               The video is shaky and grainy, but there’s Frank, looking desperate and scared and hopeful all under a defensive layer of taciturn, eyes downcast and distant. He’s holding his cap in both hands, his right forefinger worrying at the stiff fabric. Maria is behind him, her hand resting softly on his shoulder, and they’re standing in a locker-lined school hallway outside a classroom. “Are we ready?” Maria asks in a hushed voice. Frank looks like he’s forgotten how to speak. “Yeah, go ahead,” the teacher whispers from behind the camera, and then they open the door.

               The kids are doing yoga. It takes a few seconds before any of them notice that people had entered the room. There’s murmuring. A few of them point to Frank in his desert MARPAT camouflage, he clearly hadn’t had time to change since the ride from the airport, and there’s Maria at the edge of the frame, grinning from ear to ear and fighting back tears like a champion- and after a breathless second, a scream that turns into a yell that turns into “Daddy!” and the blurry shape of a gangly young girl with long brown hair crashes into Frank, throwing her arms around his waist, and she’s laughing, he’s crying and caving in around her like a shield-

               Karen slams the laptop shut.

 

               She’s trembling.

_I’ve never heard their voices before._

               She reaches for a tissue to wipe at her tears. She turns to stare blankly at her closed laptop and her breath hitches, halfway to a sob. She fights to keep her breathing even.

               The unfairness of it burns in her chest. Frank’s life and his family- one of his last moments of happiness and peace- disseminated as objects of fascination, as evidence in the public debate of the Punisher’s disputed humanity. And she intruded once, she knows that, but not like this, _nothing_ like this. She wants to scream at everyone who’s watched it, the person who sent her the link- _you don’t get to have this. This isn’t FOR you._

               She jumps when she hears a knock on the door jamb and looks up to see Ellison leaning into her office. Her expression falls to neutral, at least as much as she can manage that, and she sits up and pushes her hair behind her ear with a hand she hopes isn’t shaking. A quick breath in and out, then, “What’s up?”

               “Uh-“ he pauses, carefully considering her face. “I thought you’d be interested to hear this first, but we’re getting a new statement from Homeland Security. Castle’s at large. But he wasn’t involved in the Wilson bombings or the situation at the Willeford-” she scoffs despite herself, since she’d told him as much, and he gives her a look before continuing- “and they sent the memo to us and a few other papers. They want this cleared up, don’t want people to be confused, so they’re getting ahead of it. They haven’t said anything about this Russo guy or how he’s involved, except that he’s in custody.” He doesn’t move when he’s done talking, and they both stare at each other for a beat, expressions unchanged. Karen knows he’s waiting for her reaction.

               She waits for the other shoe to drop, instead. She’s still reeling from Lisa’s voice, her laughter-

               “Do you want the article? I figured you’d be interested in running point on this one, given your… uniquely informed perspective,” he ventures, bringing Karen out of her thoughts. She knows the offer flies in the face of his better judgment.

               She takes a second. He looks like he’s becoming increasingly impatient. She knows the story will get written even if she turns it down.

               “I’ll take it,” she says.

               Ellison turns to walk back to his office, but she says something else before he can leave.

               “I’m going to toe the line on this one, though. I’m going to write what’s in the memo. No added insights.”

               Ellison’s eyebrows shoot upwards, but his voice is measured when he asks, “are you sure about that? Doesn’t sound like your style.”

               She nods. “It’ll make it less biased, coming from me. And I don’t know enough to add anything, anyway.”

               He barks a laugh at that and leaves her office.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this back in June, right after finishing the first chapter. I don't think it's long enough. Also, I'm sorry.


End file.
